Hi Guys,

Im new to MSFS from a long time user of P3D.I totally love the graphics,but 2 things(for me anyway) are well below what P3D offers,that is the night lighting and the night sky i think they just look terrible.I was wondering if there are any addons payware or freeware to enhance these 2 features.

I have most of my settings if not all to high or ultra,still nothing changes.

With Thanks,

Gary 

Edited February 25, 20233 yr by Benbo

27 minutes ago, Benbo said:

Hi Guys,

Im new to MSFS from a long time user of P3D.I totally love the graphics,but 2 things(for me anyway) are well below what P3D offers,that is the night lighting and the night sky i think they just look terrible.I was wondering if there are any addons payware or freeware to enhance these 2 features.

I have most of my settings if not all to high or ultra,still nothing changes.

With Thanks,

Gary 

Unfortunately not Gary.  It is definitely one of the things that needs improving.

With FSX I had a file that placed all the visible stars in the sky at the correct visual magnitudes and colours - they looked great - no such thing for MSFS unfortunately.
With this and Steve's superb DX10 fixer, which actually introduced realistic twinkling effect at lower levels, it was the best I have seen in any simulator and was really immersive when flying in night skies.
Now we have DX12 and they look like Sheet! 

I fly at 4k, but the stars still look like horrible fuzzy blobs - I do my best to ignore them.

When raised in the past, some people have used the argument 'it isn't a planetarium program', but we know that, they just need to look like stars not big fuzzy blobs! 

I am hoping it is one of this years 'surprise' updates that MS / Asobo have talked about, along with Aurura etc.  They have mentioned they want to do it.

Edited February 25, 20233 yr by bobcat999

8 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

but the stars still look like horrible fuzzy blobs

Hit the nail on the head there lol.I tend not to fly at night time due to these issues,i used living airports night lighting in P3D and wow it looked amazing.Thanks for getting back,i also hope that MS/Asobo will look into it.

Gary.

5 minutes ago, Benbo said:

Hit the nail on the head there lol.I tend not to fly at night time due to these issues,i used living airports night lighting in P3D and wow it looked amazing.Thanks for getting back,i also hope that MS/Asobo will look into it.

Gary.

Sure.  I was hoping some freeware developer (or even payware actually) would take a look at it, but it doesn't seem as simple as replacing the old 'stars.dat' file like in FSX / P3D. 
It must be buried in the core sim somewhere and difficult to modify I presume.  It's a shame they couldn't just keep it the same.  With the mods I mentioned, the stars in FSX and P3D were perfectly adequate and looked really good.

Edited February 25, 20233 yr by bobcat999

This is something that troubles me in this sim. The night stars are laughably bad when you consider the fidelity of the rest of the sim. Sometimes some of them are so big that I do a double-take thinking a big fuzzy star is the moon. The stars looks dreadful, they really do. The moon often looks pretty good though.

5 minutes ago, Jazz said:

This is something that troubles me in this sim. The night stars are laughably bad when you consider the fidelity of the rest of the sim...

This is the thing.  There is a stark mismatch with the rest of the quality in the sim, even with the city light pollution reflecting off the clouds at night, which is superb.
They can't do everything at once I know, but surely this is apparent to the developers.  Does it really need a request on the official MSFS forum?  Just a statement to say it is on some future roadmap would be good.

I simply don’t fly at night. In my opinion the whole night environment needs a complete rework.

I am an amateur astronomer as I’m lucky enough to live out in the sticks in rural south west England and the night sky in MSFS is er….interesting 🤣 but as far as I’m concerned they could make a good start on it by removing the absurd, non existent street lighting that was introduced a couple of years ago.

Right now MSFS has the night environment back to front;

the countryside is bright and airports are dark! Eh?☹️

Apart from the starfield being much too low res, their visibiltiy is also completely off. A cameralense with long shutter time will give you so many stars visible, but the human eye itself, even in the darkest deser will not see as many stars as the sim's sky is showing.

For me anyway P3D is light years ahead with these 2 features,MSFS in a whole is amazing but the night lighting and sky let the sim down massively,looks like they were designed by a child with a crayon or a Dev who was obviously late going on his 2 week summer vacation

Gary

I agree the stars need looking at, but the night environment in MSFS is vastly superior to FSX and P3D. Or am I missing the point ?

2 hours ago, Benbo said:

i used living airports night lighting in P3D and wow it looked amazing

Towards the end (v4.5 for me) the only time I flew in P3D was dusk until dawn because only night flying looked decent plus I could essentially eliminate autogen and vegetation to get decent performance.  There are times when the night sky looks awesome in MSFS but that is at high altitude and when it's fully nighttime, not dawn/dusk when you get that blob look.

1 hour ago, Paul K said:

I agree the stars need looking at, but the night environment in MSFS is vastly superior to FSX and P3D. Or am I missing the point ?

Overall--hugely superior total night environment, but the dawn/dusk period stars look poorly defined, way too bright as well.  You can be in downtown any big metropolis where in the RW you would be lucky to see 5 stars because of ambient light, but that's not the case in MSFS where everywhere is a true Dark Night Sky.  

Here's one of those vastly superior night lightings in MSFS that in P3D (4.5 anyway) would have rolled along at 1FPS if that.  Lovely beautiful downtown Sophia, Bulgaria:

Edited February 25, 20233 yr by Noel

1 hour ago, Paul K said:

I agree the stars need looking at, but the night environment in MSFS is vastly superior to FSX and P3D. Or am I missing the point ?

Yes Paul - that has been mentioned.  What is being said is that MSFS has such a great environment, that these blobby starts just don't fit the general quality of the rest of the sim.  That is all.

Anyone know which sim setting might control the look/quality of the nighttime ground lighting? Often times mine looks a bit blurry and not as crisp as I'd like.

Do I need to turn off bloom?

1 hour ago, bobcat999 said:

Yes Paul - that has been mentioned.  What is being said is that MSFS has such a great environment, that these blobby starts just don't fit the general quality of the rest of the sim.  That is all.

One of my first Wishlist items was the stars issue way back when.  It's improved some I notice there is better color variation and some element of twinkling but still can use some work.  I'd love to see shooting stars in the very dark night sky that would be cool!